Description

First Edition of the First Volume of Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations

Adam Smith.An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of
the Wealth of Nations. London: Printed for W.
Strahan; and T. Cadell, 1776. First edition. Quarto (volume I
only). Approximately 11. x 8.25 inches. [12], 510 pages. Bound
without final blank (no half-title called for in volume I),
otherwise complete. Bound in contemporary full calf, ruled in gilt.
Rebacked in later brown morocco, gilt, newer endleaves. Title-page
mounted onto a stub, final leaf with outer margin restored, page 27
with a hole in the page number (number totally missing), page, 241
with a similar hole, but most of page number is still present,
gutter facing page. 509 cracked, some offsetting to title-page,
final few leaves dampstained, some minor foxing or thumbsoiling
throughout. A few inoffensive pencil notes. Still, a good copy.
[Together With:] John Neville Keynes (1852-1949, British
economist and father of John Maynard Keynes). Autograph Letter
Signed. Cambridge, 8, January, 1895. Addressed to Professor
Laughlin. Three and one-half octavo pages on one quarto folded
leaf. Some toning, a few creases, else near fine. In this letter,
Keynes thanks Laughlin for an apparent job offer in the United
States, but he politely declines. This letter raises the
tantalizing possibility - what if he had accepted and John Maynard
Keynes had been raised in the United States!
Adam Smith (1723-1790) spent ten years in the writing and
perfecting of The Wealth of Nations. "The book succeeded at
once, and the first edition was exhausted in six months...Whether
it be true or not, as Buckle said, that the 'Wealth of Nations'
was, 'in its ultimate results, probably the most important that had
ever been written'...it is probable that no book can be mentioned
which so rapidly became an authority both with statesmen and
philosophers" (D.N.B.). "The history of economic theory up to the
end of the nineteenth century consists of two parts: the
mercantilist phase which was based not so much on a doctrine as on
a system of practice which grew out of social conditions; and the
second phase which saw the development of the theory that the
individual had the right to be unimpeded in the exercise of
economic activity. While it cannot be said that Smith invented the
latter theory...his work is the first major expression of it. He
begins with the thought that labour is the source from which a
nation derives what is necessary to it. The improvement of the
division of labour is the measure of productivity and in it lies
the human propensity to barter and exchange...Labour represents the
three essential elements-wages, profit and rent-and these three
also constitute income. From the working of the economy, Smith
passes to its matter-'stock'-which compasses all that man owns
either for his own consumption or for the return which it brings
him. The Wealth of Nations ends with a history of economic
development, a definitive onslaught on the mercantile system, and
some prophetic speculations on the limits of economic
control...The Wealth of Nations is not a system, but as a
provisional analysis it is complete convincing. The certainty of
its criticism and its grasp of human nature have made it the first
and greatest classic of modern economic thought" (Printing and
the Mind of Man).
Grolier, 100 English, 57. Kress 7261. Printing and the
Mind of Man 221. Rothschild 1897.